Amid medical controversy, children saved

On his 82nd birthday, Dr. Charles Ray Jones sat in his New Haven office at 111 Park St., surrounded by patient files and wearing a blue tracksuit.

Though it has been a long while since Jones could last run — in fact, he now uses a cane to get around — Jones finds himself in a number of races: a medical one with a debilitating disease, a legal one with the Connecticut Medical Board, and even an academic one with Yale.

Over the past four decades, Jones has treated roughly 10,000 children with severe chronic Lyme disease. Parents from all over the world bring their children to Jones, and many said they consider him their final hope. But despite his popularity with his patients, many in the medical field strongly disagree with his practices, which, they say, treat a form of Lyme disease that does not exist.

Most doctors believe that Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness, almost always presents with a rash, fever or arthritic pain. But Jones says that Lyme disease can have a much wider array of symptoms, such as mental impairment, that can last for years.

Jones has already been brought before the medical board twice, both times receiving fines of $10,000 for procedural violations, which he claims threatens his ability to practice. Jones claims the high fines he received were due to the controversial length of his treatments, rather than because they caused any harm to his patients through his violations. Jones has never been sued for medical malpractice.